pool design
I’ve spent 50 of my years living in Southern California – an exhilarating half-century in which I’ve spent a lot of time, man and boy, in the presence of watershapes of various forms and sizes. The experiences I’ve had have filled me with opinions about the nature of these bodies of water and their accoutrements, so
Almost every advertisement for watershapes I’ve ever seen in a newspaper or the Yellow Pages says something about “custom” this or “custom” that. It always leads me to wonder how to differentiate between the “custom,” “high-end” and “luxury” pools others devise and the “architectural pools” or, better yet, the “aquatic art” I strive to create. I prefer the last two terms because
In my recent series on exterior design, I made only brief reference to the inclusion of pools and other aquatic features as part of outdoor compositions. I’ll make up for that now with a series of three features on approaching the design of watershapes. In most cases, a swimming pool is the biggest investment my clients will make in developing their exterior spaces. Indeed, the cost of the pool itself
To see WaterShapes TV, Part 5, click here mySpace
There’s nothing like a good breeze to turn swimming pools and other watershapes into magnets for debris – especially if there are still plenty of leaves on the trees. We had gusting winds of record strength here in Southern California the other day – enough, in fact, to make the national news. When I walked out into my backyard the next day, the skimmer basket was full and the pool cleaner had
When people talk about pools these days and have something ambitious in mind, many of the conversations focus on vanishing edges, perimeter overflows, infinity edges, knife edges, wet decks, disappearing edges and whatever other terms one might use in describing water-in-transit effects. In lots of these cases, if not most, these discussions are misdirected: Just because
To see WaterShapes TV, Part 2, click here mySpace
When I travel from Los Angeles to visit my mother, who lives across the sound from Seattle on Washington’s beautiful Bainbridge Island, I always do my best to stop by the Bloedel Reserve while I’m there. The Reserve is an internationally renowned public garden that puts its emphasis on
It shouldn’t be too surprising that, as a designer and builder who cares about quality and craftsmanship, I’ve spent some time thinking about bidding and ethics. As I see it, bidding against other contractors to win the opportunity to install a project is a fair and worthy exercise if the project’s specifications are
